


Of Poltergeists and Gilded Cages

by UmbraeCalamitas



Series: Become the Beast [7]
Category: Merlin (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Arthur King is Arthur Pendragon, BAMF Sam Winchester, Cadbury, Cadbury!verse, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, FIx It, Gabriel (Supernatural) is Loki, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Hela - Freeform, Hunters, Hunting, Hurt Sam Winchester, Loki's Children - Freeform, M/M, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Poltergeists, Protective Sam Winchester, Queen of the Dead, Sabriel - Freeform, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug, Sam Winchester has a saving people thing, Sam Winchester's brain, Spells & Enchantments, Stanford Era, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix It, Tricksters, University, Witchcraft, Witches, reincarnated king of Camelot, security guards - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-02 22:04:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15805455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmbraeCalamitas/pseuds/UmbraeCalamitas
Summary: Sam learns that the dormitory he was meant to stay in has been closed because it's being haunted by a poltergeist. Dealing with it proves to be a struggle, especially when he's caught by campus security guard Arthur King and locked inside the dormitory. Now they have to work together to purify the dormitory, but there are a lot of floors and the poltergeist is very determined not to let them win.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So my inbox exploded after posting the last chapter and I maybe felt a little bad for how people were freaking out over Samandriel and Matt's predicament, so I decided to post up the next part now instead of waiting. We're back at Stanford with Sam, but don't worry, we'll see SaMatt again. I plan on doing a drabble soon to answer a few questions people had about who Miss Watt is. 
> 
> Thanks to the Discord Crew for all of their help writing this fic, and especially to TotalNovakTrash for helping me keep the Camelot Crew on track. 
> 
> Do you remember the author's note a while back where I said that characters for other fandoms would just be making cameos now and then and this wasn't a crossover? Poor Past Talky had no idea what she was getting herself into. 
> 
> This is the first official crossover in the Cadbury series. There will be others in the future, here and there, but our focus is still remaining on Sam throughout. We've just got other things going on at the same time. Like the reincarnated members of the Knights of the Round Table coming back to themselves, among other things. 
> 
> I think that's all the author's notes out of the way. Onto the fic! Happy reading.

**Chapter One**

* * *

Sam was beginning to wonder if he was being stalked by Loki.

Leaning his head against the window, he peered through the smeared glass and watched the ravens fly overhead. There were quite a lot of them. He’d tried counting them but they moved in and out of his line of sight, never still, and he had too much trouble tracking them. There were more than three, which made them an Unkindness. 

Although, they might have been crows. Sam wasn’t actually sure what the difference was between the two birds, though he should look it up. If he had to perform a ritual that required a crow feather in the future, he wouldn’t want to grab a raven one by accident and cause the spell of fail. Or backfire. 

If it was a flock of crows, that would have made them a Murder. 

Neither were particularly pleasant in connotation, but ravens made Sam think of Cas.

He could still remember, as though it had occurred only moments ago, standing in the center of the pentagram with Castiel facing him from outside of it. He remembers listening to the flow of languages pouring out of his brother’s mouth, Enochian, Greek, Sumerian, Latin, followed closely by Crowley, standing behind Sam, speaking the words of a different spell, made to entwine with the first, Gaelic and Latin and languages long since forgotten to humans - Meroitic, Ugaritic, some languages that had been dead so long even their names had been lost, and Enochian, of all things, twisting off his tongue. 

He remembers Castiel’s eyes glowing a vibrant, haunting blue, and then the shadow of his wings unfurling around him, massive and dark. Sam had thought, in that moment, that they looked like a raven’s wings. That image, bright, bleeding blue light with the shadows of massive wings had burned its way into his mind and had yet to leave. It was the last thing Sam had seen before he woke up, fighting off an attacker, back in the past. 

Ravens made him think of Cas and Cas made him think of all the things he had left behind and the mistakes that he had made since he attempt to  _ fix things _ . 

He’d seen how well that had gone. Sure, he’d stopped the curse on Oasis Plains and the Pikes could build their development now, but two people had died - two people who had died the first time had died again. Not only that, but Samandriel had taken Matt, or Alfie as he would be known in the future, as a vessel * _ far* _ ahead of schedule. And the only thing that could’ve happened to change things was Sam. Sam had done that. Sam was the reason that Matt would be riding shotgun to an angel for however long Samandriel decided. And no, Samandriel didn’t seem like his brothers. Seemed more, in fact, like Castiel a few years into hunting with them, but that didn’t change that, if not for Sam, Matt could have had a normal life. The kind of life where you didn’t fear the things you knew lived in the dark * _ and* _ in the light. 

Maybe it was useless, trying to change things. Maybe it wouldn’t work, because all Sam seemed to be doing was making things worse.

The bus eased to a shrieking stop and the doors opened. Sam eyed the entrance to Stanford University and stood up with a sigh.

“You sure you want off here? University’s closed for another week.” 

“Yeah,” Sam told the driver tiredly, “I’m meeting a friend.” 

He stepped off the bus with his bag over his shoulder and headed toward the closest computer lab. He wasn’t meeting a friend, but he did need to check his email and he didn’t have access to another computer. He needed to know whether or not he had a place to sleep and locks were easy enough to pick. 

Sam sighed. Sometimes he wished casually breaking laws bothered him even a little.

* * *

They didn’t turn off the electricity to the university just because it was closed for part of the winter. For all the money that it would have saved them, it was probably too much work to bother. Especially if it meant sending someone in early to turn the power back on, and possibly finding out that something that was shut off wouldn’t turn back on. Like the heat.

So it was easy to pick the lock to one of the computer labs and turn on a computer. Sam lamented the fact that he had spent his money on bus tickets rather than buying a laptop. As he watched the computer boot up, he thought of Matthew, or Alfie as he would call himself in a few years, and let the regret of not having a portable computer go. If Sam hadn’t been in Oasis Plains, who knows if anyone would have found the kid before it was too late?

_ Who knows if my being there didn’t cause that too? _

The login screen came up and Sam hesitated a moment before putting in the login information he remembered Brady having in that very first life. If he used his own, they would know he was the one who broke in if anyone checked the login history, but he knew Brady was currently home, and as the boy flew to California from Wyoming to go to school, he would have an alibi. 

He probably should’ve been ashamed to have remembered his former friend’s password, but something about MedStudent4theBabes just stuck in his head. It was just so… Brady. Or what Sam had thought he was, before he learned that he had been possessed by a demon for most of their friendship. 

He opened up the web browser and logged in to his email, scrolling through junk until he found the message from the Student Services Office.

The entire message consisted of a capital V and a signature line for the person who sent the message. He recognized the typo instantly, having done it himself enough times. It was what happened when you were copy-pasting something and hit the Shift key instead of the Control key. 

He’d have to talk to Student Services, which didn’t open for another two days, which meant it was back to the crappy motel room. 

Sam dropped his head into his arms and closed his eyes. 

Sometimes he regretted coming back almost as much as he regretted setting Lucifer on the world, but somehow he didn’t think he’d ever top that.

* * *

He gets the same motel room he had the last time and the repetition is like a slap in the face and confirmation that his attempts here and now are futile. He lies down on the bed and doesn’t cry into the pillows, but he closes his eyes and sleeps for twenty-eight hours, waking only to drudge tiredly to the bathroom and back to the bed. 

He knows this is bad. Knows it’s bad when all he wants to do is sleep and the idea of food brings the taste of ash to his mouth even as all he can feel is a lethargic sort of boredom. Even the thought of eating is too exhausting to contemplate and he simply rolls over and closes his eyes and slips back into a dreamless slumber that does nothing to shake the tiredness from his limbs or his mind or his soul. He doesn’t want to move when he wakes. The ache in his back from being in the same position for too long isn’t enough to make him want to roll over onto his back, so he just lays there with his face pressed into the pillow and stares blearily at the wall. 

He wants Dean. 

He wants to call his brother and tell him everything, beg him to help him, to take charge, because Dean has almost always been the one leading between the two of them and sometimes it’s easier to follow. Would be easier to be here if he didn’t feel so alone. He can’t tell Dean about the future or being from it, but that doesn’t stop him wishing he could. 

Someone knocks on the door but Sam lets the sound wash over him. He thinks he hears his name called behind the door, but his eyes close and he goes back to sleep. 

* * *

He finally gets up Thursday morning. He’s spent more than two days lying in bed. His hair is oily and tangled and his stomach is empty, but Sam doesn’t care. He only wants to know where he’s supposed to be living so he knows whether or not he needs to find a place to crash when his funds run out and he can’t afford the motel anymore. 

He climbs into the shower because it’s just easier to get answers when you don’t look like you’ve been sleeping on a park bench, but washing his hair is almost not worth the trouble. His arms are heavy and his body is physically exhausted, as though he had been running for the past two days rather than lying in bed. Still, he manages to wash his hair and scrub the dirt from his skin. He hasn’t had a shower since the fight with the giant spider and he’s still covered in public transportation ick. After he’s showered, he brushes his teeth and combs his hair and feels almost human as he pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He still feels like eating anything is a waste of time and effort, but he pulls a bottle of water out of his bag and forces himself to drink the entire thing before he leaves the room. 

Then it’s a quick walk to the Student Services Office to find out that, no, he couldn’t move into the dormitory. No one could. Because the dormitory was haunted. 

That was… unexpected. 

* * *

He didn’t remember this happening last time. 

In fact, Sam didn’t remember anything supernatural happening on campus last time, up until Jess died. Obviously Brady had been a factor but he hadn’t known that until after. He didn’t remember The Feckin’ Bean or Kathy or Alice or Rey, and he wondered why he’d never seen them before. 

Then again, Brady, or the demon who possessed Brady, and Azazel had wanted to keep Sam cut off from his hunting skills and give him that life he so desperately wanted, if only so they could rip it away from him. So of course, they wouldn’t have wanted him to have any attachment at all to anything supernatural. 

Which meant…

Sam stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the sidewalk, his veins turning to ice. 

Which meant that Azazel and Brady had probably killed every creature that fit into the paranormal spectrum, quietly, so as to not alert Sam. He had gotten his normal life for almost four years, but it had cost the lives of all the creatures he now knew lived at Stanford. 

Did that mean Rey  _ had _ been here the last time, only he had been killed before Sam got to meet him? And Kathy and Alice? Sam didn’t know for sure that they were creatures, though he suspected that Alice, at least, was something more than human. He’d seen her climb a flat wall at one point to get away from a security guard, and the kid tended to hang around Rey a lot. If she was a trickster, he wouldn’t be surprised. 

Had they been killed last time, too, Alice and Kathy? What about Merlin -  _ the  _ Merlin? And Professor Ryan and Morgana. And what of the other creatures on campus? Sam didn’t know how many there were but he knew there were others. The people he saw in The Feckin’ Bean were an odd assortment. There had been a blonde woman on multiple occasions who he’d seen with three different men who all seemed to be, somehow, too similar to be different people, for all that they looked nothing alike. 

He’d watched a woman sitting in the corner with a cup of coffee one afternoon cycle her hair through four different colors before deciding on hot pink. She’d then worked on adjusting the contours of her nose. She’d been joined later by a thin, almost ethereal young woman with pale blonde hair and wide blue eyes, who sat down and calmly started talking about the illegal breeding of unicorns and Pegasi resulting in an extraordinary new species. 

He, himself, was a time-traveling vessel of a fallen angel turned Devil who had been possessed by demons, soulless, possessed by angels, killed, resurrected, and flung back almost two decades in time. 

It was almost like Stanford University was a beacon for the unusual. Like it was some sort of… tear in the fabric of reality that brought together oddities, or perhaps just created them right there on the spot. 

But if that was true, and if Brady wouldn’t be possessed for almost another year, what had Sam done that could possibly have affected the universe so much as to prevent deaths he hadn’t even known were coming? 

Sure, he was more open to accepting supernatural creatures as allies after the life he had lived, but that didn’t explain why he had met tricksters and Camelot-mages and reincarnated witch-princesses and whatever Alice and Kathy were. Hell, he’d been kidnapped and used as a sacrificial offering to a Pagan God in his first day back in time! 

Sam looked down at th the bracelet on his wrist. Midnight black stone, it gleamed in the sunlight. He’d become accustomed to the weight of it, finding himself twisting it around his wrist sometimes when he was deep in thought, his fingers tracing the engraved marks of Loki’s name and the Cadbury egg. 

Was this the cause of everything? Loki had marked him, whatever that actually entailed, and Sam was sure that that mark probably looked different to him than it did to creatures with a higher perception. Rey had teased him about it, after all, and Fenrir had said he could sense the mark. Was that why these creatures were approaching him? Loki had marked him and that meant he was safe? Even though he was a hunter? If anyone even knew that… 

And if that was the case, fine, he had Loki to thank for encountering all forms of magical madness, but he hadn’t turned away the friendship of a barista who swore at him as often as she flirted with him, a young possibly-Trickster who scaled walls and did something to have security on her tail, and a trickster-kitsune who was the son of Loki, the original trickster, who was actually the archangel Gabriel. 

But was meeting and befriending them enough to prevent them being killed? He supposed if the demons wanted to keep a low profile, murdering a bunch of Sam’s friends wouldn’t help with that. But that brought up the concern that the campus was host to either Azazel himself or one of the demons under his command, and Sam might have runes and wards and Enochian sigils plastered across his soul, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t find him just by looking in the university directory. 

Sam rubbed a hand through his hair. 

Maybe… maybe he needed to sit down and talk to Rey, tell him that Sam was a hunter and that there were possibly demons on campus, and actually ask someone for  _ help.  _

It was a new concept but, well, this was a new life, wasn’t it? Time to start living it like a new one and not rehashing the previous. 

Because that was so easy. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some things Sam needs to do before he talks to Rey. He ends up having a different talk with someone he didn't expect, but probably should have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super thanks to the Discord Crew for being their awesome selves! They're a huge part of the reason this series is as great as it is. And thank you to all of you who are reading it. Your responses, be they kudos or comments, make this so much fun. 
> 
> Happy reading.

**TWO**

* * *

The apartment building he’d been given directions to was located behind The Feckin’ Bean. Right behind it. Like some cosmic joke referencing his caffeine addiction, or maybe a higher being assuring him that, yes, talking to Rey was a good idea. 

And he would, but not yet. He had some things to deal with before that. The first being the new key in his pocket. 

The dormitory was haunted - a fact he had only learned because the secretary in the Student Services Office had looked ready to cry when Sam said he was there to ask about housing. She had apologized profusely for snapping at him about having to deal with displaced students on top of ghosts and that she didn’t make enough to cover her therapy bill for the existential crisis this was all causing. Sam hadn’t been too concerned with her snapping, though. In fact, he was almost grateful. 

Hunts required certain tasks be done to complete them - investigation, determining what exact creature they were dealing with, how to handle it, clean-up, etc. Having a set list of requirements was easier than Sam being left standing uncertain, nothing to do and nowhere he needed to be, unsure of his next move. 

With a haunting, or whatever this actually was, Sam had direction. He focused his mind on the tasks he needed to accomplish and felt less scattered as he immediately set about fulfilling them. 

First order of business: check out his new apartment. 

With the dormitory out of commission for the foreseeable future, the university had spent the break coming up with a place for the displaced students to stay. They’d ended up buying out the rent of three apartment buildings for the next two semesters and were assigning rooms as students responded to the email that had been sent out. It was first-come, first-served on individual apartments, and as one of the last to respond, Sam didn’t have a choice on getting an apartment to himself. He’d been assigned one of the last open spots in an apartment he would share with another student. 

The room was in the corner of the apartment nearest the elevator, which was fine with Sam. It meant a quick escape route if he needed one and lots of windows, which was his honest preference. He liked natural light. 

As he unlocked the door to the third-floor apartment, he had an almost hysterical thought of finding Loki sitting on the couch, happily greeting his new roomie. It would be hilarious and terrifying and Sam stepped into the empty apartment, snickering loudly. He could think of a few possibilities that were more ridiculous, but not many. 

Whoever his roommate was, they weren’t there. The apartment wasn’t large but it was decently sized. The door opened to a sitting area well-lit by large windows in one wall. A long couch, almost long enough for Sam to stretch out on fully, sat across from a small television set. A bar with two barstools separated the living room from the kitchen, the cream-colored tile showcasing lots of counter space, and a lot of cupboards for storage. He’d investigate that later and see what they might need for groceries. He supposed he would need to check if there were things that should be avoided, like peanuts. 

Definitely check with the roommate before grocery shopping. 

There was a single bathroom, the mixed white, grey, and blue marble design of the sink a soft, peaceful tone against the glaring shade of the neon pink shower curtain. The rug that hung over the side of the tub was purple. Sam opened the bathroom closet, prepared for the worst. 

No towels. 

Thank fuck. 

He was going towel shopping. Normal-colored towel shopping. Beige. Blue. 

Anything but bright, blinding pink. 

He was terrified at the prospect of meeting the landlord. If it was Dolores Umbridge, he was  _ out _ . 

There were two other doors, clearly leading to the bedrooms, and the one had a piece of paper taped to the front with a doodle of a cat chasing a crow, so Sam tried the other door. 

The bed was Queen-sized, which was a relief. Sam was tall enough that he often had his feet hanging off the end of a bed, and that was easier if he didn’t also have to scrunch up to fit on a Twin. 

He had a single window in the room and he peered our, chuckling when he saw the roof of The Feckin’ Bean below him. No wonder the whole apartment smelled like coffee. 

Sam opened the closet and looked under the bed and in the dresser drawers, but everything was empty, if a little dusty. His door had a lock and there was a fire escape outside his window. His bed didn’t have any sheets but that was easily rectified. 

He had to go pick up his bags and heck out of his motel anyway, so he might as well go shopping now. 

And get some not-pink towels. 

* * *

Sam’s bed sheets were dark brown and so were his towels. He’d bought another set of towels in a lavender shade that was pretty but not glaring (or pink) as something of an apology for throwing out the atrocious pink shower curtain. He replaced it with a light grey one that went well with the sink, but left the purple shower rug alone. 

Throwing the towels and his bedsheets in three different washing machines in the basement of the apartment building, he checked out the apartment to see if his roommate was back yet, but they weren’t. Not knowing what sort of schedule they kept, he decided to write a quick note, asking if there was anything they were allergic to that he should definitely not bring into the apartment, and preferences on food choices. The cupboards had some canned fruits, vegetables, soups, and peanut butter, and there was bread and jam and milk in the fridge. He also found a huge package of ramen, which suggested that his roommate was not a freshman and understood the need to eat and not destroy your funds. He, however, refused to survive on noodles and peanut butter and jelly. He needed at least a little lettuce, so he mentioned preferring salads and that he would get some fresh stuff for salads at the store later and did they want anything?

He ran down to the basement and switched his laundry over to the dryers and ran back up to the apartment and unpacked his duffel bag. He hung what clothes he could up, because hangers were cheap and assisted with wrinkle-removal. Then he unpacked his growing collection of really heavy textbooks and set them up on top of the dresser. 

The room had a small desk and he unpacked his journals and writing utensils into the drawers, quietly spreading out in the room and making it feel like a place he was going to be staying for a while. He wasn’t exactly sure why he did it. Usually he preferred to have everything packed up so he could grab his bag and go at a moment’s notice, so doing this seemed counterproductive. And yet, it almost felt… right, somehow. There was that slight buzzing in his mind, an awareness of something he shouldn’t have truly been aware of so he just accepted it for the moment. He would learn why eventually, he was sure, though having to wait for an explanation was just… annoying. 

Why couldn’t he have developed an actual useful psychic power, like telekinesis, or the ability to snap his fingers and have his homework complete itself? Maybe if he could train this inherent knowledge to tell him the right answer on a test, it wouldn’t be so frustrating. 

Sam left the apartment to fetch his laundry, finding the towels and sheets dry. He carried them up to his apartment and folded the towels, putting them on separate shelves in the closet so his roommate could use the purple ones and they wouldn’t have to share towels with a stranger. Then he made up his bed and flopped onto it with a sigh. 

He had plans to handle a possible haunting that night, so he needed to get some sleep now. 

Wondering if he’d get to meet his roommate that evening, Sam closed his eyes and fell asleep. 

It was going to be a busy night. 

* * *

Sam wore jeans and a dark red flannel shirt. He packed lightly for ease of getting in and out. He had a large container of salt he’d bought from the grocery store and a lighter in his pocket, a knife strapped at his hip. It would be bad if he was caught with it but it would be worse if he was caught with a gun. 

His lockpicking tools did the trick on the door and Sam closed it quietly behind him. 

The dormitory was eerily quiet. Sam had stayed in a dorm for the first year on his original run through Stanford, though not this one, and he remembered the constant ambient noise of other people. A background of chatter and footsteps and muffled music that was glaringly absent in the utter silence of the vacant dorm.

It wasn’t quite like stepping into a tomb. Sam had been in tombs before, but it was close.

He’d done a bit of research into the dormitory but there hadn’t been any recorded murders or suicides that could have resulted in a ghost haunting the place of their death. It was possible someone had brought something in that had a spirit attached to it, but something told Sam that wasn’t right. He suspected his irritating sixth sense was telling the truth about it not being a mere ghost, but he wanted to be certain. 

What was that Russian proverb? Доверяй, но проверяй. Trust, but verify. 

Well, he wasn’t sure he trusted his weird psychic itch, but he certainly planned to verify. 

_ Man, _ Sam thought as he moved over to a wall and pulled a black marker out of his pocket,  _ Dean would kick my ass if he knew what I was doing.  _ Despite knowing that, Sam still drew the protection ritual on the wall, because there was no better way to piss off a spirit than fuck with the place they were haunting.

He was just adding the last of the symbols on the protection seal when something crashed into his back, shattering on impact. He grunted, staggering, as he heard glass tinkle to the floor.

Turning around, Sam had just enough time to duck the curtain rod that came at him like a spear. He took off across the room, arms raised over his face to protect it from the objects being flung at him from every direction. A wail started up, low at first but growing louder and louder, until it was like a trembling scream shaking the windows in their panes and stripping the paint from the walls in great long lines, like rope. 

Sam clapped his hands over his ears but the wail was in his head, the sound shaking his very brain, aching in his teeth and behind his eyes. He sank to the floor, choking on the scream trying to claw its way out of his throat. Behind his closed eyelids, he could see a face, mouth opened in a shriek as the spirit wailed on and on and on...

* * *

Sam blinked open his eyes, staring at a ceiling of shimmering shadow and swirling trails of blue-white light. He watched for a moment as the wisps of light moved through the shadows, going on to somewhere he did not know, occasionally joined by colored trails - red or blue, green or yellow. The colors were wrong, somehow. He didn’t know why, only that they were, and something in him felt a deep welling of sorrow that there were so very many painted with shades of only partial light. 

“You’re not what I expected.”

The voice was smooth and cultured, and Sam sat up to seek out of the source. At a small table not far from where he lay on the stone floor, a young woman sat. She looked, at first glance, to be in her late twenties, but the way her eyes stared into him, deep and dark, he was certain she was far older than her appearance suggested. 

It was hard to tell how tall she was with her sitting, but Sam thought she might have been almost as tall as he was - a feat that was not succeeded by many. Her hair was almost to her hips, black, and halfway down fading into a silvery-grey as the locks twisted in large curls. 

She leaned over the table, arms crossing lazily as she regarded him with eyes so dark he might have once mistaken her for woman possessed by a demon, but she was something much more than that. “I’m almost disappointed, except I can see there’s far more to you than a first look would show.” Her lips curved up in a smirk that was both foreign and familiar. “I’m tempted to keep you, just to see how far he would go to get you back.” 

“Who?” Sam asked. He pushed himself to his feet, watching her as she did, but she didn’t move to either retreat or attack. 

Leaning back, she waved an inviting hand at the chair across from her and then continued the motion, waving her hand over the table. Smoke danced beneath her hands, coalescing into a teapot and two cups and saucers.

“Loki, of course,” she said, as she poured tea. Sam took the offered seat across from her. “He seems to be very interested in you and, well, I’ve been curious.” She set down the teapot and picked up her cup, sipping delicately. “Can you blame me?”

Sam studied her for a long moment, thinking about the familiarity of her smirk, of the lights twisting through the dark of the endless ceiling above him, and where he had been before he was here. He remembered the shrieking cry of the poltergeist - very definitely a poltergeist with that much energy to throw things across the room - echoing in his head, driving him to the floor, inescapable.

Picking up his own cup, Sam leaned back in his chair, wondering if he should be concerned about how well he took his unexpected meetings with gods and goddesses and tricksters. 

“No, I can’t blame you for being curious. I suppose I should be surprised, even, that it’s taken this long for me to meet you.” She raised her eyebrows at him and he almost laughed. There was a gesture that was just so very  _ Gabriel _ . “You look different than I expected, your majesty.” 

Her lips split in a grin and she laughed. “You’re quick. Smart and beautiful. Perhaps I do see what Father likes about you.” She tilted her head, regarding him quietly a moment, and then smiled softly into her teacup. “You may call me Hela.”

“Thank you.” He watched her for a moment. “May I ask…”

Hela nodded. “Like my brother, Fenrisulfr, I am able to take what form I choose in a realm of dreams. He does not come to you chained and with a sword piercing through the roof of his mouth, and I can come to you with a face that is full and beautiful.” She looked away from him, seeming to study the room around them, but Sam thought she was more concerned with avoiding his gaze. “It makes people nervous, I understand, to see me in my true form. It is best to give them some peace when they are already suffering through death.” 

Sam wanted to ask if  _ he _ was dead. It was certainly possible, though why he ended up in Hel rather than Heaven was a question he would also want answered. He suspected she might have been attempting to lead the conversation in that direction, even. But…

“Fen leaves his chains and wounds behind when he comes to me, but he is still a giant wolf.” He saw the way her shoulders tensed, a warning to stop, but he spoke on anyway. “To come appearing as something you are not…”

She turned to him, dark eyes burning with fury. “What?” she demanded, her voice the hiss of cold off ice. “Go on, Samuel Winchester, finish what you were saying. Should I not want people to accept me? As my grandfather accepted me? As my father, who has not visited my  _ glorious kingdom _ in centuries has accepted me?” Across the left side of her face, her skin began to peel, melting away as though being burned off her face. There was no muscle or sinew, no blood. Bone, pure black, gleamed like obsidian against the pale flesh of the right side of her face. The eye on her right side remained dark, almost black, but out of the deep socket of the left side of her face, her eye gleamed golden and furious. She had no lips. Only her teeth, sharp and gleaming. As he watched, the skin on her left arm melted away, leaving behind grasping fingers of bone clutching at a teacup in clawing fury. 

She slammed the cup on the table and leaned over it, her face into his, staring into him with her heterochromic eyes, looking deadly with half of her face belonging in the grave. 

“Should I instead greet them in this form, Samuel Winchester? Should I come to them looking of the death that has culled them, greet them with fear and the darkness of their doomed future? Should I have greeted you this way? You, who sit there in shock, cowed by the half-dead woman in front of you as though--”

Sam took a sip of his tea, never looking away from her gaze, and she paused, cutting off her sentence. She tilted her head in that confused-dog-like expression that was clearly not limited to angels and regarded him for a long, quiet moment. 

“You aren’t frightened of me.”

“Should I be?”

“I… I’m a monster.” 

“I know a little bit about being a monster,” Sam said, giving her a sad smile. “It doesn’t seem fair to be considered one for something you have no control over.”

Hela was frowning at him. “You’re weird.” She sat back in her chair so she wasn’t towering over him. “And my grandfather would disagree with you.” 

Sam cleared his throat. “Well, if the myths I’ve read of your dad and siblings are true… I think the real monsters are still loose.” 

The two of them drank tea for a few minutes, sitting in silence. Hela mostly watched him, which was fine. Sam took the time to scan the room. It didn’t have an actual ceiling, just the darkness like a void that swirled with white and colored wisps of what he thought might have been souls. Despite being tall, the room wasn’t actually that large. It was made of stone and, other than the small table with two chairs, had a single bed in the corner. The only other piece of furniture was a throne against the far wall. The back and seat were made of black stone, like his bracelet, but curving white bones encircled the throne like teeth, making it appear as though a dragon lurked just behind the chair, ready to devour Hela and all in the room. 

The room was actually very bare. There were no windows and the light in the room came from a few torches along the walls and the wisps overhead. Beyond that… nothing. 

Sam turned back to Hela, wanting to ask but not sure how to say it without either sounding stupid or insulting. She seemed to have read the question in his eyes already, however, and turned to look at the room with a sorrowful expression. 

“They call it a kingdom,” she mused quietly, “my domain.” Her left index finger trailed over the rim of her teacup with the scratching sound of bone on glass. “But it’s really a prison.” She lifted her eyes to him and they were sad. “Hundreds of thousands of souls have passed through these walls and now dwell in Hel. This is the place where the dead who do not die as warriors come. Those not welcome in Valhalla.” She looked down, her voice dropping into a sad whisper. “But the real prisoner here is me.” 

No doors, Sam realized. He hadn’t noticed at first, but now that she’d said that, he looked at the walls again. No windows and no doors. 

“You’re not allowed to leave,” he whispered. 

“Oh, I can leave.” She pointed at the ceiling. “This is the path of the dead. The souls that are bound for Hel travel along it to their resting place, and I am welcome to travel it as well, if I so wish.” Her smile held no humor or happiness. “I am allowed to leave whenever I wish. I simply have to die to do so.” 

Sam stared at the souls that passed overhead, wondering at the unfairness of the world. Fen was chained alone on a island, a sword shoved through his mouth. Hela was trapped in her kingdom of the Norse underworld, alone and unable to leave. He could only imagine that the other stories were true, as well. The massive serpent that encircled the world, thrown out to sea, and the eight-legged horse who was enslaved as Odin’s steed. 

There were two others, weren’t there? The brothers who had been forced against each other. The one that was turned into a wolf and killed the other. Vali and Narfi, he thought they were called. Were all of the stories true?

“You can ask, you know. I don’t mind.” He looked back at Hela to find her studying her tea, turning the cup in her fingers as though reading fortunes in the liquid. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.” 

“Why is it I can come here? And to… the place where Fen is.” 

“Lyngvi,” Hela said, setting her cup down. “It is an island in the middle of the lake, Amsvartnir.” She held out her hands. “May I see the bracelet Father gave you?”

Sam stretched out his hand and Hela took it in hers. Her fingers trailed along his wrist, smooth and gentle, the tips of the fingers on her left hand cold, while the others were warm. 

She twisted the bracelet along his wrist and traced Loki’s sigil in the stone. 

“Part of it has to do with this,” she said, turning the bracelet so she could trace the engraved egg on the other side. “There are nine branches of Yggdrasil.” She lifted her eyes to him in question and he nodded. He knew that from studying into Norse mythology. “Each stretches to a different realm, a different world. And to enter these realms, you must pass through a doorway.

“There are those who can walk the branches of Yggdrasil but who cannot see the doorways into some of the realms. We are in Niflheim now. Beyond these walls, the world is a vast wasteland of ice and cold, where none can survive. The realm over which I preside, Helheim, or Hel, if you prefer, has one doorway.” She gave him a sad smile. “And it only swings one way.” 

She looked back down at the bracelet, her fingers playing idly over his skin in a way he didn’t think she was even aware of. He wondered how long it had been since she had felt actual physical contact with any being and felt rage burn heavy within him. He forced himself to swallow it down and leaned forward, bracing himself on the table with his elbows so he could reach out and press his palm against the outside of her hand.

He felt her flinch when he did so, though she settled a moment later, and he made a note that her left hand being bone apparently had no bearing on her ability to feel his touch. 

The hard press of her knuckles against his palm were cold but not painfully so and Sam kept his hand pressed gently against hers as she cupped his other wrist in her hands. He didn’t comment on the shakiness of her breath or the wet sheen in eyes that wouldn’t meet his. 

“So it’s a key?”

She nodded. “Like one of your ID cards. It reads that you are permitted entrance and allows you to pass into the realms. It is a rare gift.” 

“You know what an ID card is?”

Hela smiled, her eyes filled with humor. “There are still those who worship the Old Gods even in your time, Samuel Winchester. Those who follow the Norse ways and do not die in battle or have a notable death are permitted entrance to Helheim. As they pass through, the presence of their souls allows me to see a bit of their life, and so I get a glimpse into the world they came from.” She waved her right hand toward the ceiling before cupping it beneath his wrist again. “This is, of course, only one path, and Hel is only one section of what lay beyond. The doorway is the same, but where that doorway opens to depends on the individual. Perspective has always played a large role in what becomes of a soul.”

Her fingertips smoothed over the veins in his wrist. “I suspect my Father has been letting you quietly learn to walk the branches of Yggdrasil yourself, but that eventually he may teach you some of his own tricks. You are doing quite well for not having been taught. I can tell you’ve been to visit Fenrisulfr many times.” 

Sam nodded. “I try to… make myself dream I’m there. I don’t know if that’s what does it. Sometimes it doesn’t work.” 

“You’re doing better than many in your position would have, given the same opportunity. Dreams themselves are doorways, so yes, that would be a path you could take.” 

Sam nodded quietly, thinking. “I’m not dead, am I?”

Hela shook her head. “No. When you are asleep, we are able to sense that your soul is closer to our realms because you are near to dreaming, and so calling you to me was no large feat.”

The poltergeist’s wailing must have knocked him unconscious, then. A much better alternative than having been killed. 

“I suspect you are eager to leave,” Hela said, pulling her hands away from his. “I can show you how to call yourself back to your body.” She rose from her chair, but before she could stride away, Sam reached out and snagged her hand. She turned to him, surprised. 

“I do need to deal with the poltergeist I was fighting, but may I come back here and visit you?” 

Hela’s smile was surprised but happy. “I would like that very much,” she said softly, her fingers tightening briefly on his hand. “Now. Let me show you how to wake yourself up.” 

* * *

Sam opened his eyes to almost complete darkness and winced as he moved. His back felt like it was one giant bruise, his body hurt from lying on his side for however long he had been here, and he had a headache that felt like it might be shooting toward migraine levels, which didn’t bode well for his stomach. He struggled to his feet, glass crunching underfoot, and stumbled to the door, only managing to keep from falling by catching himself on the wall. He had to stand there a couple minutes, head resting against the paint, as he tried to reorient himself. Only when he felt like he wasn’t going to fall over the moment he stepped outside did he open the door and make his way down the steps from the dormitory, glad that there were only a couple. 

He ended up halfway to the motel before he remembered he had an apartment now and turned around. He probably looked drunk, but somehow he managed to get back to his apartment, and even inside, without being picked up by the police, so he’d count it as a win. 

He stumbled into his room and collapsed on the bed. Tomorrow, he would deal with making hex bags. Right now, he needed sleep. 

He was out before he’d even finished the thought. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to pop on over to tumblr and submit your Asks to the Cadbury characters.
> 
> And Alice, please stop trying to set Morgan up with Kathy. Rey is planning to stage a coup and I'd hate to see the coffee suffer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam goes to deal with the poltergeist. He runs into an unexpected obstacle in Arthur, the campus security guard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out, guys. It kept giving me fits for some reason. But here you are! May I introduce Arthur King, formerly Pendragon, of The Camelot Rift.
> 
> Special thanks to TotalNovakTrash, who helped me write this chapter and also was her totally awesome self and wrote it from Arthur's POV. Make sure you check it out here.

**THREE**

* * *

The downside of moving to a new area was finding out where to buy ingredients.  ****  
** **

Sam had left the hunting life behind the first time he went to Stanford, so he had no idea where to go to get Angelica Root or Van Van Oil. Crossroad dirt would be easy to find - he just needed to find the nearest intersection.  ****  
** **

Salting and burning worked for ghosts, but poltergeists were tricky. A salt and burn _could_ work, but if the poltergeist was too powerful, then all the work put into finding the object or bones they were attached to would be for nothing, and a waste of precious time. The House Purifying Ritual that Missouri had introduced them to when they handled their own house in Kansas hadn’t worked due to the nature of the poltergeist there, as well as the power it had derived from Mary’s presence and Azazel’s misdeeds.  ****  
** **

But after that, when they’d had some downtime, Sam had researched the ritual and ingredients, and it should work. Demonic interference had most likely been what caused it to fail that time, but with this being a regular poltergeist, he didn’t see why it wouldn’t function as it was supposed to.  ****  
** **

The downside, beyond not knowing yet where to get ingredients, was exactly how many hex bags he would need. For the ritual to work, hex bags needed to be placed in the walls on each of the cardinal points, on each floor of the building. Four bags for each floor in a ten-floored building.  ****  
** **

Sam scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. He _hated_ looking through phone books for local places he could buy ingredients, because he always ended up at a joke or costume store at some point, asking for ingredients that had the cashier giving him weird looks.  ****  
** **

_Should just say I’m the weirdest chef ever. Very demanding. No compromises._ ****  
** **

Sitting on the couch, Sam looked around the apartment. It was quiet. His roommate wasn’t back yet and Sam wondered if they were even moved in yet, aside from dropping off some food and putting a sign on the door. But as his gaze roved over the main living area, he began to spy some decorative items that he hadn’t noticed previously. Perhaps they were new.  ****  
** **

Curious, he stood up from the couch and moved over to the wall where there were a few small shelves attached to the walls. He found a few candles of varying colors and a couple pretty stones. There were a few plants - easy to care for ones, like a spider plant, an aloe vera plant, and devil’s ivy.  ****  
** **

Another shelf held a row of pots with plants that took him a moment to place, before he realized it was a tiny herb garden. The mint was fragrant enough to catch his attention, and one he rubbed the leaves or spines, he picked out the others are thyme, rosemary, and lemon balm. The little pots had names written on them, but they weren’t the names of the herbs, and Sam smiled a little to see that either the pot or the thyme inside it had been named Freya, the rosemary Aphrodite, and the lemon balm Cassandra. Thinking about what each of the herbs could be used for, he suspected it was the plant itself that had been named.  ****  
** **

He moved around the apartment, looking at things, his suspicions growing. It was when he found the sigils etched into the bottoms of the tins in the kitchen that he knew. His roommate was a witch.  ****  
** **

Now, Sam knew that not all witches were bad. He had learned, through research before and after he came back in time, that some witches were born with an inclination toward magic they couldn’t control (and thus needed to _learn_ control), and that some fell into studying magic through various means. There _were_ witches who made deals with demons, but they tended to do so to gain a shortcut to power. There were some reasons to rush for power. Sam knew that better than anyone. He’d given in to his thirst for demon blood, become the abomination the angels claimed him to be, in order to do what he could to save the world, to save his brother. His intentions had been good, but it had dragged him down lower than he ever should have gone. He could understand someone making a deal for magic power to protect others, and he could understand regret.  ****  
** **

Sam wasn’t worried about a good witch (and he cringed at using that phrase because all he could think of after it rolled to the forefront of his mind was Glinda from _The Wizard of Oz_ ). He was concerned with his roommate being a witch with malicious intentions.  ****  
** **

Not just because they might hurt someone, though that was a concern. If Sam had to take out a witch who was also his roommate, regardless of whether or not he hid well enough that no one realized he had been the one to kill them, having his apartment as a murder scene would put him on the radar for every cop in California.  ****  
** **

Sam glanced at the door with the picture of the cat and crow on the front. Malicious witch or not, breaking into someone’s room could get him his ass kicked, and in some respects, he’d deserve it. But he needed to know if his roommate had a skin-bound recipe book or an altar drenched in blood and bones.  ****  
** **

He found himself over by the door before he’d even thought about it, fingers touching the knob. He didn’t know if his roommate was even here. Could be they were still in bed, but Sam couldn’t put this off. It was too dangerous to do so.  ****  
** **

His fingers wrapped around the knob and turned.  ****  
** **

He expected it to be locked. He expected resistance. There was none. The knob turned and the door opened.  ****  
** **

The first thing he noticed was the smell. The room was filled with a strangely attractive mix of spices and paint fumes, and it didn’t take long for him to realize why.  ****  
** **

There was an easel in the corner, a white sheet partially draped over it, obscuring the main portion of the canvas from view. Painting supplies were scattered everywhere on the floor around the easel. There was a textbook lying on the bedside table with a paintbrush being used as a bookmark.  ****  
** **

There was a braided stretch of what looked like willow vines across the far wall from which hung a bunch of herbs. Sam recognized mint, chamomile, and rosemary on sight, though he couldn’t place the others and would have to look them up if he wanted to know what they were. His eyes moved around the room, taking in the small space. It seemed to be a mirror of his room. Same style queen-sized bed, closet on the left side of the room.  ****  
** **

Checking inside the closet revealed only clothes, though the style varied dramatically between vibrant purple and pinks and a more professional style. It also looked as though there might be two different sizes. Did he had two roommates?  ****  
** **

Under the bed revealed only dust. There weren’t any magic circles for performing ritual sacrifices and he didn’t find a copy of the Necronomicon. He _did_ find some books on magic, though. At first glance, they appeared to be the sort of books you could find in the New Age section of a bookstore, but when he opened them, he found that they were handwritten. ****  
** **

He skimmed through them, and it was certainly possible that they were personal grimoires, but they didn’t hold anything particular alarming. He found a few different protection spells, a spell for keeping food warm, another for stopping leaks. Simple everyday things. The second book had spells obviously for painting - some to keep paints from fading, others to protect a finished painting from harm. The book shifted to recipes partway through, and Sam took note that his roommate knew how to use some herbs to mix ancient paints and dyes.  ****  
** **

He wondered if his roommate was an art major or just really liked painting.  ****  
** **

Sliding the book back into place on the shelf, Sam took a final look around and left the room. He’d been thorough without being indecent (he didn’t have any desire to go through his roommate’s underwear drawer) and hadn’t found anything suggesting she was a witch with unpleasant intentions. From the amount of spells she had that dealt with cooking, Sam thought she might be categorized as a Kitchen Witch. That was the term, right? ****  
** **

_Perhaps I’ll get the chance to ask her, eventually,_ he thought, as he shut the door behind him and walked back into the kitchen to pour himself a drink. He was sipping from his glass of tea when the thought occurred to him.  ****  
** **

He wondered if his roommate (one of them, at least) would know where to find van van oil.  ****  
** **

* * *

Two days later, Sam still hadn’t met his roommate, but they had left him notes on the fridge in response to his. He’d done a grocery run upon learning they didn’t have any food allergies to be wary of, and filled the fridge with a variety of fruits and vegetables.  ****  
** **

He’d also left them a note asking if they knew where he could buy some van van oil, and rather than come back to find the address of a shop written on a sticky note, he’d found a small bottle of van van oil. Beneath it had been a stack of sachets, each with runes of amplification carefully sewn on them in what had obviously been a very time-consuming task.  ****  
** **

Sam had mixed the ingredients together and then filled each sachet carefully, being sure to tie them tightly shut. He stuffed them all into the bag Dean had given at the bus stop, when he left for Stanford, along with a knife and a hammer he had bought from a local shop.  ****  
** **

He would need to break into the walls at the cardinal points on each floor and insert a sachet. Ten floors, four cardinal points. He remembered Kansas and the house they had lived in before his mother died. Before… everything started. The poltergeist had fought them, tried to prevent the ritual from being completed. This one would be no different. With forty sachets to fit in the walls, he would have a hell of a time fighting it off.  ****  
** **

He was briefly tempted to see if Rey would help him, but no. He couldn’t ask Rey to do that. He couldn’t put his friends in danger.  ****  
** **

This was his job and he’d get it done.  ****  
** **

He just might need to add in a few extra protections, is all. Just in case. ****  
** **

* * *

The strap of his bag dug into his shoulder as Sam moved quietly across the darkened ground. The air was moist with a rain that didn’t want to do more than hang heavy in the air, and the damp grass threatened to soak through his shoes. He had to wipe his hands on the inside of his shirt so his fingers would be steady on the lockpicks, but he got the door opened quickly enough and slipped into the dorm.  ****  
** **

Shaking his head to get his wet bangs off his forehead only slapped them hard into his eyes and he cursed, sweeping a hand through the mess to brush it back.  ****  
** **

He shivered, wishing suddenly that he’d worn a jacket to take the brunt of the rain. It was cold in the dorm. That familiar chill of a spiritual presence. Well, at least he knew he wouldn’t be doing this for nothing.  ****  
** **

Pulling the hammer out of his back, Sam glanced at all four walls, then up at the ceiling. Fifty floors, four walls to a floor, and one poltergeist who was probably about to get incredibly angry.  ****  
** **

Piece of cake. ****  
** **

Twirling the hammer in his fingers, he brought it down sharply, punching a hole in the plaster of one wall. He shoved his hand in his bag and pulled out one of the satchets, shoving it into the hole and moving quickly to the next wall.  ****  
** **

He finished the first floor without a reaction from the poltergeist, which was fine as far as he was concerned. He’d be happy to go through all fifty floors without getting interrupted, though he doubted that was possible. Still, he’d take what he could get.  ****  
** **

The lights weren’t working and even if they were, Sam wouldn’t trust the elevator. He took his first flight of stairs to the second floor and put another hole in another wall.  ****  
** **

Damn but this was going to be a long night.  ****  
** **

The click of the door closing made him pause, the hammer buried in the plaster of the third wall. It wasn’t any colder, though that didn’t mean much. It was still chilly. That _could_ have been the poltergeist. ****  
** **

He held his breath, listening. Footsteps. Barely there but discernible in the incredible silence of the empty dorm. The lack of furniture made the steps echo oddly. Whoever it was, they were coming up the stairs.  ****  
** **

Sam had a sudden thought of Brady, of the demons that had been on campus in his first run through Stanford, all unknown to him. What if this poltergeist was their doing? In the same way that the poltergeist in his old house had been attracted to the place where so much had happened. What if they had somehow sensed the ritual and were here to stop him? He hadn’t brought anything to fight _demons_ . ****  
** **

His hand tightened on the handle of the hammer and he pulled it out of the plaster as quietly as he could, taking one of the satchets and sticking it into the hole. He kept his breathing quiet, listening, his head slightly turned toward the stairs so he could catch sight of whoever was coming in his peripheral vision. What if it _was_ Brady? He knew some exorcisms by heart. He would just need to get him pinned down, keep him fight attacking, and he could get rid of the demon. He might even be able to save Brady this time. ****  
** **

There was an odd brightness, reddened, and it took Sam a moment as the person came up the stairs to recognize the look of light burning pale crimson against someone’s palm.  ****  
** **

Sam narrowed his eyes as much as he could without completely blinding himself and began extracting his hand from the wall, turning a little toward whoever was on the stairs. He didn’t say anything, just waited to see what they would do. Shit, if it was Rey, he was going to kick that kitsune’s ass for scaring him.  ****  
** **

He watched as the man crouched down, moving away from the stairs in a slow, graceful movement that reminded Sam of the way Dean moved when on a hunt. Like a huge cat getting ready to pounce.  ****  
** **

The man paused. Sam was still tracking him with narrowed eyes, wary of the flashlight and the man’s attempt to keep the light hidden. He was just about to call out to him, to tell him that, no, he was not particularly hidden, nice try, but then the hand moved and the flashlight, bright and blinding, swung upward into his face.  ****  
** **

Unable to see who it was, hearing the start of a word (spell?), Sam lunged forward. He hit the man harder than he had intended, sending them both crashing hard to the floor and scraping his knuckles raw across the tile as he grabbed the flashlight out of the man’s hands. He pinned the man’s legs to the floor with his own, one of the man’s arms pinned between the floor and his back, with Sam lying across his chest to keep him down. The man struggled beneath him but Sam was a big guy and he learned how to use that to his advantage when keeping someone down.  ****  
** **

He lifted the flashlight and pointed it at the man’s face. The guy’s eyes screwed up and he looked away from the beam. “Mind not shining my own flashlight directly in my face?” ****  
** **

It took Sam a moment before he was able to place the guy, but his brows drew together in confusion as he recognized the man as one of the guys always chasing Alice around campus. “You’re a security guard.” What was his name, though? Had Alice ever mentioned it? ****  
** **

“And you’ve broken in to an off limits dorm and are currently sitting on me.”  ****  
** **

Sam stared down at the guy for a moment, thinking. “Christo,” he said, but the guy’s eyes didn’t change, and Sam sighed. Not a demon, then.  ****  
** **

“Sorry,” he said, moving the flashlight beam away from the guy’s face and pulling himself off of the guy. He pushed himself to his feet and shook out his hand. His knuckles stung and he shone the light on them for a moment. They were bleeding, skin torn across all of them, but not bad.  ****  
** **

The guard pushed himself up and Sam handed back the flashlight, only to have it pointed at his face again. He resisted the urge to steal it back. It could be useful. Also he didn’t want the guy to tase him for taking it. Did security guards carry tasers? Or nightsticks? ****  
** **

“Oh hell, please tell me you’re here alone,” the guy groaned, sounding genuinely worried. Did he know about the poltergeist, maybe? ****  
** **

“Who would be with me?” he asked, instead.  ****  
** **

“The Hellspawn.” ****  
** **

Sam’s shoulders stiffened and his grit his teeth. Fuck, but seriously? Was it Hellspawn this time instead of Abomination? “Excuse me?” he forced out through his teeth.  ****  
** **

“You know.” The guy sounded disgusted and fuck, but if he was an angel, he could fucking deal with the poltergeist his damn self. Who was he anyway? Fucking _Michael_ ? That would figure. “The Coffee Runner.” ****  
** **

Sam’s thoughts derailed. It took him a moment to get it back on track. The Coffee Runner? “You mean Alice? _”_ ****  
** **

“ _Don’t say her name!_ ” ****  
** **

Sam stared at him for a long moment, before he couldn’t help but laugh. _You’ve got to be kidding me. He really is just a security guard._ “You’re one of the ones who are always after her, aren’t you? Why can’t I say her name?” Oh, he couldn’t _wait_ to tell Alice about this. “Is this like a _speak of the devil_ thing?” Ha! If only this guy knew.  ****  
** **

The guard huffed. “Who are you?” ****  
** **

“Sam.” He held out his hand. He wasn’t going to chance giving out his last name. He didn’t need this guy looking him up later to try and find out what he was doing in the abandoned dorm. Although he’d have to find some way to get him to leave… ****  
** **

The man shook his hand but his was giving Sam a squinty-eyed look he didn’t like. “Not… Sam Winchester?” ****  
** **

_Shit._ “I can’t imagine you and she talk much,” he said warily. _Not a demon. Fuck, I should’ve put up some sigils to repel angels, but why would they be here now? Or is it something else? I wasn’t this popular at Stanford last time._ ****  
** **

“We don’t,” the guy interrupted his thoughts, “but I’ve heard all about you from her sister.”  ****  
** **

Sam’s eyes danced around the room. Alice had a sister? Who? “She has a sister?” ****  
** **

The guy’s frown deepened. It made him look like he was glaring. “Yes, Kathy. You didn’t know they were related?” ****  
** **

Kathy and Alice were sisters? Why hadn’t they ever said anything? He ran over their interactions in the past. Why hadn’t he ever _noticed_ ? ****  
** **

He watched vaguely as the guy turned and shone the flashlight across the wall, studying the hole for a long moment, then shining it down on the hammer Sam had dropped.  ****  
** **

“What exactly are you doing here?” the man asked, though the tone was far less accusatory than Sam would have expected. Should he tell him? Would the guy even believe him? How exactly could he get him to _leave_ ? ****  
** **

“I—” He was cut off by the sound of the door being slamming hard against the wall. “Shit.” He looked back at the guard. “Did you break the salt line?” ****  
** **

Arthur blinked at him. “The what?” ****  
** **

Fuck! Fuck, why didn’t he think to put a line across the doorjamb? “The line of salt!” he snapped. “Did you mess it up?” He already knew the answer.  ****  
** **

“Why? Is it important?” There was a weird note in the guy’s voice but Sam didn’t have time to study it and figure out what it meant. “It’s protection, isn’t it?” ****  
** **

“Not anymore!” Sam grabbed his bag off the floor and hefted the hammer. Ignoring the man’s questions, he walked over to the unblemished wall and broke through it with the hammer.  ****  
** **

“What are you doing?” the man yelled, stomping over.  ****  
** **

Sam shoved one of the satchets into the hole. “Trying to get myself killed.” He grabbed the man’s arm and started pulling him toward the stairs. “Trust me, you do not want to stay on this floor.” Shit, why hadn’t he gotten him to leave? “Up the stairs!” He shoved the guy toward the steps. “Go!” ****  
** **

Shoving the hammer in his bag, he pulled out the salt and shook a line across the bottom step, before hopping over it and taking the stairs two at a time. The salt line wouldn’t hold off a poltergeist for long - not if they had the strength to throw physical objects around the building - but it might give them time.  ****  
** **

He grabbed the guy’s arm again as he made it to the third floor, pulling him toward the wall and ignoring his complaints. “Shut up. Take your flashlight, put a hole in the middle of the wall, and put one of these inside.”  ****  
** **

“Why?” ****  
** **

“For decoration!” Sam snapped, going to another wall and using the hammer again. He shoved one of the satchets into the hole and moved to the next. “There’s a poltergeist haunting the dorm, in case you missed the memo, and now it’s pissed off, so I’d like to avoid getting thrown out a window, thanks. Now are you going to help me or are you going to keep asking questions?” ****  
** **

To his credit, they guy started helping him.  ****  
** **

Sam was limited on the amount of salt he had brought, but he still managed to create a line across the stairs as they moved up for a couple of floors. They were on the seventh when the guy finally spoke again. “How did you know about the haunting?” ****  
** **

“Pretty sure everyone knows about it at this point,” Sam muttered, yanking the hammer out of the wall. He belatedly noted the guy’s lack of surprise. “Wait, you actually _believe_ this place is haunted?” ****  
** **

The guard grabbed one of the satchets out of Sam’s bag and used the butt of his flashlight to smash a hole in the wall. “I sure as hell _hope_ it’s not,” he said, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced. That might be because of the crashing and wailing a few floors down. He muttered something else under his breath but it was too low for Sam to hear.  ****  
** **

Sam took this in. “You’re not a hunter, are you?” The guy didn’t _act_ like a hunter, but the way he moved… ****  
** **

“I hunt deer,” the guy said, giving him a strange look.  ****  
** **

Sam shook his head. Definitely not. “Nevermind.” He grabbed his bag from the floor as the guy took the stairs up to the next floor. He wasn’t breathing any harder than Sam, which, if he chased Alice across campus everyday, probably shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise. “What’s your name, anyway?” He tossed his bag to the middle of the floor and went to one of the walls.  ****  
** **

“Arthur.” There was a smashing sound as he broke through the plaster. “How exactly does a guy learn how to… well, bust ghosts?” ****  
** **

Sam snorted. “I am not a ghostbuster.” ****  
** **

“Really.”  ****  
** **

He smirked, shaking his head. “For one thing, this is a poltergeist. Spirit, yes. Ghost, no. I would much rather deal with a ghost. Sometimes you luck out and they’re actually friendly.”  ****  
** **

“Oh really, so you’ve met Casper.”  ****  
** **

“Not Casper, no. But… some people just get lost.” Sam thought about a woman forced to relive the night of her death over and over, unable to move on. ****  
** **

It was easier with two people and Sam was glad to have the other guy along, surprisingly. Most people would have been freaking out in this situation, but Arthur seemed to be handling things _remarkably_ well. “I… cannot believe you aren’t panicking, to be honest.”  ****  
** **

Arthur laughed, but it sounded bitter. “This isn’t even the most interesting thing I’ve done this week. And I’ve seen some… really weird shit.”  ****  
** **

That could make a difference.  ****  
** **

There was a clatter and a loud hiss and then a roaring from just a few floors down. “Fuck, it broke through the salt line.” He raced up the stairs. Why did this building have to be so damn _tall_ ? Couldn’t it have haunted something a little smaller? Like an outhouse? ****  
** **

“Care to explain why we’re defacing school property?” Arthur asked, smashing through another wall. “If I’m getting fired, I’d at least like to know why.”  ****  
** **

“It’s a spell,” Sam said, swearing as he pulled out a satchet that had come untied. It didn’t look like anything had fallen out, so he tied it shut again and thrust it into the hole. Eleventh floor. He’d have to remember that if the spell failed.  ****  
** **

Fuck, he hope the spell didn’t fail.  ****  
** **

“You ever worry about getting… I dunno, burned at the stake for this sort of thing?” ****  
** **

Sam bit off his own laughter. Oh hell, if this guy knew even a little about Sam’s dad, he would know just how screwed Sam would be if John ever found out anything about this. “I’m more worried about getting shot for trespassing, to be honest. They didn’t burn witches in America, anyway.” ****  
** **

“So you admit you’re a witch.” ****  
** **

Sam laughed. “Not a witch. Not a warlock either.” For some reason, that made the guy flinch. “I’m… just a guy who knows some magic. Okay… more than some. Kind of a lot, actually.” He thought about all the spells he knew. “Huh. Shit, maybe I _am_ a witch.”  ****  
** **

There was a screech from the floor beneath them. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Arthur shrieked, looking down the stairs. “If you’re gonna chase us, at least shut the fuck up!” He grabbed Sam’s bag from the center of the floor as Sam shoved the satchet into the last wall. They both bolted up the stairs as the poltergeist hammered against the walls in fury.  ****  
** **

“I wish I had a fucking sword!” Arthur growled, throwing the bag down onto the floor and pulling his flashlight through the wall so hard the bulb flickered.  ****  
** **

Sam laughed, shaking plaster from the hammer. “You could name your flashlight Excalibur.” He caught the guy looking at him strangely. Come on, he had to know about Camelot. “Your name’s Arthur and there’s a kid in The Feckin’ Bean named Merlin,” he explained, moving to the next wall. “You guys trying to start a Renaissance Fair here or something?” ****  
** **

Arthur cracked a grin at him and they both jogged up the stairs to the next floor. “I once dated a woman named Gwen, who is now in a relationship with my friend Lance. So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”  ****  
** **

Sam laughed. “Seriously? Those are all your real names?” ****  
** **

Arthur nodded. “Wanna know the best part?” ****  
** **

“What’s that?” ****  
** **

“My last name’s King.”  ****  
** **

Arthur King. “So… every teacher in primary school…” ****  
** **

“I’ve been King Arthur since Kindergarten.”  ****  
** **

Sam laughed. “Are you friends with Merlin, too?” ****  
** **

Arthur chuckled. “Don’t you know? He’s my pet warlock.”  ****  
** **

“Should’ve brought him along,” Sam said, shaking his head. He couldn’t help but grin. If this guy actually knew that Merlin was _the_ Merlin, he’d piss himself. “He could’ve helped us fight off this stupid poltergeist.” ****  
** **

They lapsed into silence, putting most of their effort into smashing holes in walls and racing up the stairs. As fit as both of them were, fifty floors was still fifty floors, and both of them were breathing hard by the time they made it to the forty-fifth.  ****  
** **

“Oh god, I’m calling off tomorrow. My legs are gonna be jelly.” It took two tries before Arthur’s flashlight made it through the plaster. “Is this something you do a lot?” ****  
** **

“To be fair, this is the tallest building I have ever dealt with a haunting in.” Sam had the sudden thought of the Empire State Building being haunted by a poltergeist and had to close his eyes a moment so he wouldn’t be sick. “Maybe the power will come back on after its exorcised and we can ride the elevator back down.”  ****  
** **

“Oh god, yes, please.” ****  
** **

One the forty-ninth floor, Sam ran out of salt. He carefully making sure the limited amount didn’t leave any gaps. He staggered his way up the rest of the stairs. ****  
** **

“What happens if this doesn’t work?” Arthur gasped, shoving a satchet into the wall and just leaning there for a moment. “Do I get eaten?”

“It’ll probably throw us out a window,”  Sam muttered, grabbing his bag from the floor. “And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have wings.” ****  
** **

“I left mine in my other uniform,” Arthur grumbled, grabbing the banister and taking the stairs as quickly as it seemed he was able. “How will we know if it works, though?” ****  
** **

“Trust me,” Sam muttered, remembering the explosion of the expelled poltergeist. “We’ll know.”  ****  
** **

He smashed his hammer through the wall as Arthur punched a hole in another with his flashlight, and something occurred to him. “Oh shit.”  ****  
** **

“What?” Arthur asked sharply. “What is it?” ****  
** **

“This place doesn’t have basement, does it?” He hadn’t looked. Why the fuck hadn’t he looked to see if there was a basement.  ****  
** **

“No,” Arthur said, laughing. “No, thank fuck, it does not have a basement. I am _not_ trotting down fifty flights of stairs and waving high to Casper on the way. Thank you, Sam!” ****  
** **

Naturally, that was when the poltergeist broke through the last salt line.  ****  
** **

It felt like a wall of noise against his face, the pressure of the poltergeist’s presence and its wailing. It threw Sam backward, sending him crashing into the actual wall, his ears ringing and head spinning. There was a wild flicker of light and a shattering sound. He glanced up in time to see the vague image of Arthur’s flashlight as it spun through the air in an arch and out of sight beyond the window.  ****  
** **

Then Arthur himself went flying by, thankfully not toward the window. He let out a yell of fury as he was thrown to the other side of the room. Sam watched him try to roll to catch his feet in a move that would have been impressive as hell, except his feet slid out from under him and instead Arthur let out a shout as he fell down the stairs.  ****  
** **

Shit! Sam lunged for the bag in the center of the room, managing to catch the strap just as the wind came at him again, sending him against the wall. He looked around for his hammer but it was nowhere in sight. Grabbing a satchet out of the bag, he turned toward the last wall and sent his fist through it as hard as he could. The plaster crumbled under his punch and he dropped the satchet in the hole and pulled his arm out.  ****  
** **

The poltergeist slammed him hard against the wall and pinned him there. Fuck. Why hadn’t the spell worked? He tried to look over at the wall Arthur had been doing. It had a hole in it. But the satchet? ****  
** **

“Arthur!” he yelled, trying to push himself away from the wall. The poltergeist was too fucking strong. “Arthur!” ****  
** **

Something groaned behind him, the sound of metal straining and breaking. Something snapped hard and Sam turned his head enough to see a four feet length of the wooden banister from the stairs raise itself in the air like a spear. ****  
** **

Fuck. This was not how this was supposed to go. He shoved hard at the wall, but it was like something was laying across his back, pinning his chest to the plaster. He was a sitting target, and the improvised spear took aim at his back.  ****  
** **

Sam sucked in a breath, thinking. God, what could he… what could he do? What…  ****  
** **

“Gabriel!” he shouted.  ****  
** **

Something came whipping through the air past Sam’s face and smashed into the wall. There was a shrieking wail, like metal being torn apart and a bow being drawn wrong across a violin, and Sam had to shut his eyes as the whole world lit up with a bright, flaming light. ****  
** **

And then it was gone.  ****  
** **

Sam collapsed to the floor with an _oomph_ of noise and heard the clatter of the spear… the banister, as it hit the floor a few feet away. He lay there on the floor for a few seconds, gasping. That had been so close.  ****  
** **

“Gabe?” he murmured, rolling over onto his stomach and looking up.  ****  
** **

But no. It wasn’t Gabriel.  ****  
** **

Arthur stood at the top of the stairs. There was blood dripping down his forehead and his shirt was twisted oddly around his frame, but he stood there glaring like someone had just dared to kick his dog. “Next time,” he growled at Sam, “I am bringing a fucking sword.”  ****  
** **

Sam staggered to his feet and looked at the wall beside where he had been pinned. Then he looked at Arthur. ****  
** **

No.  ****  
** **

No fucking way. ****  
** **

He stuck his hand in the hole. “Uh, hey, wait a second!” Arthur yelled, limping over. “If that fucking ghost comes back and throws me down more stairs!” ****  
** **

“It’s gone,” Sam assured him. “The ritual worked.” He grabbed the hard handle of something and pulled it out of the hole. For a moment, he could only stare at it.  ****  
** **

The satchet had been untied, then knotted closed around the handle of the hammer. Of Sam’s hammer. Sam’s fucking hammer, which Arthur had apparently _thrown through a wall from twelve feet away_ . ****  
** **

He looked up at the security guard, who was staring at him with a look Sam couldn’t quite read. Sam thought it spoke of more knowledge of things that go bump in the night than the man might ever be willing to admit.  ****  
** **

“I don’t miss, Sam,” Arthur said quietly. “Ever.”  ****  
** **

Sam shoved the hammer and satchet back inside the hole, just to be safe. “Good to know.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam wakes up the next morning and has an unexpected visitor in his dorm. When he goes to The Feckin' Bean for coffee, he has a couple very revealing conversations.

**Chapter Four**

* * *

 

Sam groaned as he trudged toward consciousness, the ache of overused muscles making itself known. His stretched his legs, only to immediately regret it as pain shot up through his thighs. He grunted and curled his legs up, his head slipping off the pillow as he buried his face in the mattress and muttered something about how all stairs could go to hell. 

It took a few minutes before he was even willing to try moving again, and he only managed to roll over onto his back. He groaned at the ceiling, frustrated. If he could get into the bathroom, he could crawl into the bathtub and fill it with hot water. He didn’t even care if it scalded his skin off. It would loosen the muscles that were screaming at him. 

He had a brief moment where he wondered if Arthur was hurting as badly, or worse since he wasn’t as used to hunting as Sam, and getting thrown around by the other party. Then he rolled over again and ran out of mattress.

He hit the floor with a thump that reverberated up through every sore muscle and just lay there for a moment, groaning into the carpet. 

Bath. Hot bath to soothe his aching muscles. 

Sam wondered if it would be easier to just crawl to the bathroom. 

Deciding that stretching his legs was probably a good idea, he forced himself to his feet. It was a long, arduous process filled with much groaning, but he made it upright. He even managed to snag a pair of pants to change into before he staggered his way to the bathroom. 

He couldn’t bring himself to wait for the tub to fill and it wasn’t big enough for someone of his height to stretch out anyway. Instead, he turned the shower on as hot as it would run and stood under the spray and willed his quadriceps to loosen up so he stopped feeling like a hobbling old man. 

By the time he turned the water off, he could actually lift his leg over the side of the tub without wincing, so he counted it a win. He dried off and pulled on the pair of pants he had brought in with him, and brushed his teeth before leaving the room. 

He was halfway back to his room when he realized he wasn’t alone in the apartment.    
  
He paused and stared at the bar, where Alice was sitting, watching him while she ate Nutella out of the jar with a spoon.    
  
“Did I just walk by you in my boxers?”   
  
She pulled the spoon out of her mouth with a pop. “Yep.” She licked her spoon. “And you owe me, like, seven Capri Suns and some brain bleach.”   
  
Sam closed his eyes, nodded, and stepped into his room.    
  
When he stepped back out a few minutes later, he was dressed in jeans and a dark green t-shirt. Alice was still sitting at the counter, perched on one of the stools, scraping the bottom of her Nutella jar with a pout.    
  
“How did you get in?” Sam asked, grabbing a glass out of the cupboard and pouring himself a drink. He glanced over at Alice and poured her one, too.    
  
“I climbed through the window.” She stuck her tongue out at him, then perked up at the glass of milk he set in front of her. “You’re the best, Sam.” She shoved the plate beside her toward him. “Kathy sent danishes. Just don’t tell Rey you’ve got them or he’ll break in and raid your fridge.”   
  
Sam eyed the jar of Nutella. Alice pulled it close to her protectively. “This is mine. I bought it. You can’t have it.”    
  
“And you brought it with you?”   
  
“No, I left it in your cupboard from the last time I broke in your apartment.”    
  
“Does this happen often, you breaking into my apartment?” He pulled the foil off of the plate and eyed the danishes. Kathy had sent over a variety and he ended up picking the one with cream cheese and blueberries.    
  
“All the time,” Alice said, grinning at him. “Almost every night, even. You look cute when you’re sleeping.”    
  
Sam broke off a piece of his danish and threw it at her. She laughed and drank her milk, leaving herself with a milk mustache across her lip. Sam snorted into his own glass.    
  
When he finished eating his danish, he wrapped the plate back up and set it on the counter for later.    
  
“Are you coming to the Bean with me?”   
  
Sam was pretty sure his body wouldn’t appreciate it if he skipped caffeine today, so he nodded. “Do you have deliveries to make?”   
  
“Nah. Arthur is out sick today. What’s the point?”   
  
Sam hesitated a moment, but really, he planned on telling Rey… well, not everything, but some stuff. If Arthur hadn’t been there the night before, Sam didn’t think he’d had made it to the top floor, much less survived the encounter with the poltergeist. It had been a lot more powerful than he’d anticipated.    
  
“How’s he doing, do you know?”   
  
Alice was in the process of chugging the rest of the milk from her glass and held up a finger for him to wait. When she’d finished, she licked the dribble of milk rolling down the outside of the glass and bounced over to the counter to set it by the sink.    
  
“I don’t usually bug Arthur when he’s not chasing me.” She turned to him. “But if you want me to, I’d be happy to break into his apartment.”    
  
“Have you ever considered ringing the doorbell?”   
  
“Not my style, gumdrop.” She planted her hands on her hips. “You want me to go make sure the big bad security guard didn’t get his butt kicked by some poor coffee-deprived student?”    
  
Sam frowned for a moment. “He helped me out with something last night. He’s probably pretty sore today.”    
  
Alice’s teasing smile settled back into a semi-serious expression. “Okay, I can handle that. He can’t chase me if he’s hobbling around like you were this morning, anyway.” She grinned at him. “Kathy first, though!” She grabbed his hand. “Come along, Sam!” She tugged him after her toward the door, singing, “We’re off to see the wizard! The wonderful wizard of beans! Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee beans.”    
  
Sam chuckled as he let himself be dragged out of the apartment. Alice was nice enough to let him lock it before she pulled him toward the stairs.    
  
“Ah, no.” He tugged his arm back and pulled her toward him. “I am definitely taking the elevator today.”   
  
“Suit yourself,” she said, winked, and vanished.    
  
Tricksters. Honestly.   
  
Sam rode the elevator down to the first floor and, not finding Alice there, stepped outside. She was sitting on the rock wall, swinging her legs, humming a random tune under her breath. When she saw him, she hopped to her feet. “Come on, slowpoke. I have to attend to royalty soon.”    
  
Sam rolled his eyes. Arthur must enjoy telling that King Arthur joke a lot. Then again, Merlin, Gwen, and Lance.   
  
Stepping inside was like getting hit with a wall of coffee. Sam basked in the smell of roasting beans and scanned the room. Kathy was at the counter, handing coffee to a tall woman with thick, wavy hair that had her back to them. There were a few people spread out around the room, though he only recognized one for certain.    
  
“Rey!” Alice shouted with delight, bounding across the room to throw herself at the other trickster. Sam followed at a more sedate pace. “I did it,” Alice was saying to him. “I went down all five floors without a blip.”    
  
“I knew you could,” Rey said, hugging her. “Good job.”    
  
She was practically wiggling with glee, but pushed herself off his lap shortly thereafter. “I have to talk to Kathy. You want a mocha, Sam?”   
  
“Sure.” He stayed standing by Rey’s chair, watching her dance off behind the counter. Once she slipped out of sight, he moved his attention to Kathy, but was distracted by the woman she was handing coffee to.    
  
Morgana. No, Morgan. It was Morgan in this time. She’d remembered her past life, they had said.    
  
He looked back at Kathy. Merlin was also behind the counter, though it was probably pretty close to the end of his shift. Sam knew that he was the Merlin from the legends. His lips turned up in a grin. If Arthur only knew that…   
  
Arthur, who had a friend named Lance and an ex-girlfriend named Gwen. Lancelot and Guinevere. It had seemed funny the night before, but looking at it now, it seemed too much of a coincidence. Were Gwen and Lance just people who hadn’t remembered their past lives? Was Arthur King actually King Arthur? King Arthur who had ruled over Camelot.   
  
He watched Morgan leave the door with a coffee in hand, because even the people who worked there admitted that The Feckin’ Bean made better coffee than The Camelot Rift.   
  
It was far too much of a coincidence.   
  
Maybe it was a good thing he signed up for Dr. Ryan’s Arthurian Lit class this semester.   
  
“You need to talk to me, Sam?” He looked back at Rey. The kitsune had one leg crossed over the other, his fingers turning idly over the mug (an actual mug) of coffee on the table. The dark liquid was spinning in the mug and Sam could see shapes forming in the swirl of cream. The swirling cream slashed across the dark coffee like the blade of a sword, then twisted into a crown. He was obviously projecting his thoughts about Camelot. He watched as something like a dog seemed to take shape, and he had a moment where he dearly hoped that didn’t mean he was going to be haunted by a Grim.    
  
Sam looked up from the cup. Rey’s head was tilted to the side and his tails danced behind him, curving like question marks at his back. Sam frowned. There were other people here! He looked around at the room, but the lights were too bright and he couldn’t determine if anyone was looking before he had to shut his eyes, shaking his head to try and shake away the burn in his vision. It felt like he’d open his eyes in a pool and let the chlorine at them.    
  
When he opened them again, the lights seemed to have dimmed, and Rey’s tails were hidden away again. Sam stared over Rey’s shoulder where he had seen them but they didn’t appear again.    
  
“Sam.”   
  
He blinked and met Rey’s gaze. There was an amused smile on Rey’s face - something sly and knowing, and Sam resisted the urge to stick his tongue out.    
  
“How are you feeling?” Rey asked, and Sam frowned at him. “You smell like spirit.” He crinkled his nose up in disgust. “Poltergeist. Yuck.” He leaned back in his chair and peered up at Sam through thick lashes, a pout on his lips. “Why do you smell like poltergeist, Sam?”   
  
Sam grimaced and sat down in the chair across from Rey. “There was a poltergeist haunting one of the dorms on campus.”    
  
“I know,” Rey said, smiling. “Everyone on campus knew the dorm was haunted. Why are telling me something I already know?”   
  
“I may have… I know a spell to get rid of a poltergeist.”    
  
“Oh. Are you a wizard, Sam?”   
  
Rey’s casual tone was making Sam’s skin itch. He felt like he should leave before the fox actually bared his teeth. Instead, he didn’t move other than to tuck his hands between his thighs. “No. Not a wizard.”    
  
“Are you sure? You seem to be under the impression you can magic your way out of any danger.” His grin was a little too wide, showing too many teeth. “So, you know a spell to beat a poltergeist, because you’re just that good. And I assume you went to deal with said poltergeist because you’re just that good. I assume you also didn’t ask for help because you just that good.”    
  
Sam winced, his mouth turning down in a grimace. He stared at Rey’s knee, unable to meet those dark orange eyes.    
  
“You gonna tell me, Sam? Or should I guess your mindset, too?” There was something like a growl growing in Rey’s voice - a rough grumble beneath his words. “Are you truly that arrogant?”   
  
“I am not,” Sam hissed, baring his own teeth back at Rey. “I didn’t want to drag you into it.”   
  
“So drag someone else in!” Rey snarled, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward into Sam’s face. “I don’t really give a shit if you don’t trust me, Sam, but for fuck’s sake, the least you can do is make sure someone has your back so you don’t end up screeching my father’s name right before you get fucking killed.”    
  
Sam’s anger vanished abruptly. “I… you know I called for Ga-- for Loki?”   
  
“Every trickster in the world knows you called for him, Sam,” Rey spat. “Who do you think has had to step in to make sure he doesn’t come here and raze the whole university to the ground?” He leaned back harshly into his chair, glaring deeply. “Dad’s been in a state since he realized he didn’t hear your call. You realize if his majesty hadn’t had a hell of a pitching arm, you’d be dead right now?” He dropped his voice to a low hiss. “Do you even know what that would do to Kathy? To Alice?” He actually growled. “Do you even fucking care?”   
  
“Of course I care!” Sam snapped. “I didn’t go there planning on getting myself killed! There were only ten floors, for…” He blinked, looked away from Rey, thinking. There had been fifty floors. He knew - his legs remembered walking up all those stairs. But when he had planned out the hunt, he had made forty satchets, enough for ten floors, because there had only been ten during planning.    
  
So why did he walk up fifty floors? How had he walked up fifty floors?   
  
“Something happened last night,” Rey said, and though he was very clearly still angry, it sounded like he was trying to push that feeling down. “Things went weird. And then they went wrong, and a bunch of people got hurt because something screwed with the natural order of things. Sam, I’m a bit more aware of the magic that goes on in this place than you are, all right? Trickster. It comes with the territory. So yes, there was a poltergeist on campus and it was haunting a dormitory, but the dormitory had been abandoned so no one was in danger until you put yourself right in the path of it, and antagonized it.”   
  
Sam looked up at him, meeting his earnest gaze. Rey kept clenching his jaw in fury. “I can name five different plots against various people going on right now on campus, each of them affecting different people and each more dangerous than the last. But handling them has to be delicately or we risk triggering something bigger than a pissed off spirit tossing around busted furniture.”   
  
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Look… do you need me to find someone for you? Someone you’re comfortable working with? Because I can do that, Sam. If that’s what you need to have someone at your back, I can--”   
  
“No,” Sam said sharply, “no, I…” He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. “I didn’t want to say anything because I was nervous about how people would react. We don’t… I don’t actually have a good reputation with… non-humans.” He looked up at found Rey watching him. Sam sighed. “I’m a… I’m a hunter, Rey. I hunt…” He waved a hand at Rey himself and winced. “I hunt people like you.”   
  
“Things like me, you mean,” Rey said, watching Sam closely. “What is that lovely phrase… saving people, hunting things? Family business, isn’t it?” His eyes glimmered bright orange. “I do know your name, Winchester.”    
  
Sam felt suddenly cold. “You... how long have you known?”   
  
Rey sent him a look like he was an idiot. Perhaps he was. “Winchester isn’t actually a common name, kiddo, and your dad’s made sure that your name brings certain connotations to mind. We’ve made it a habit to keep an eye out on your family, especially when you move into one of our territories.” He waved a hand to indicate The Feckin’ Bean and everything around it. “I claimed this place as mine years before you turned up. And with Alice here and still in training, I wasn’t about to take chances your name was just a coincidence. I introduced myself pretty quick, and it didn’t take long before you ended up on a hunt.”    
  
Sam tried to think of what his first hunt had been once he got to Stanford. Before he could come up with it, though, Rey was already answering the question.    
  
“Imagine my surprise when your first hunt is one of my own marks.” His eyes glittered with dark humor. “I’d already been planning on going after him for the way he was treating the waitress at the bar, nevermind the other patrons, but then you waltzed in and took him for fifteen hundred bucks.” Rey leaned back in his chair and grinned. “You’d make a helluva trickster, Sam.”    
  
But Sam was still stuck on the fact that Rey knew he was a hunter. “I don’t understand. If you knew what I was, why didn’t you leave? Or make me leave? Why would you want anything to do with me?”   
  
The kitsune shrugged. “Curiosity. Foxes are known for it. ‘Sides, Kathy liked you and she’s one of the best judges of character I know. And I didn’t want to base my judgment of you on heresy about your dad. I don’t know John Winchester. Never met him. Didn’t you know either until I did, and you seemed a decent sort. Still do. So unless you think that’s gonna change, I don’t see a reason to up and leave just ‘cause of your name.”    
  
Sam was staring at him. “Remember you sat across from me at a very uncomfortable breakfast and realized I was a trickster and didn’t even try to stab me once.” His lips curved up in a smile. “Quid pro quo, Clarice.”   
  
“Thank you,” Sam thought to say. It stumbled out of his mouth too quickly, almost panicked, like if he didn’t say it he might never get the chance to.    
  
Rey’s eyes softened. “Not planning on leaving, kiddo. I like you. I’ve known you were a hunter for a while. I think I even mentioned it at breakfast after Thanksgiving, but with everything else going on, it might’ve slipped you by. But I’m here, and if you need help on a hunt, I’m not bad in a fight. Or if you need someone else, someone you know you can trust, I can find them.”   
  
“I know I can trust you,” Sam said, without really thinking about it. His mind was on the million other things he needed to do. The things he had come back to do, that he didn’t know how he was going to do all by himself.    
  
Maybe he wouldn’t have to.    
  
“I appreciate that,” Rey said softly.    
  
Alice popped back over shortly after that, handing a coffee to Sam and a lollipop to Rey, who promptly stuffed the thing in his mouth with a grin.    
  
“You might want to talk to Merlin, Sam. Let him know that Arthur didn’t die last night. I’m gonna go check on him for you.” She paused for a moment, staring at Sam. Then she lunged forward and hugged him tight around the middle. “I’m glad you’re here,” she muttered into his shirt.    
  
“Um.” Startled, it took Sam a moment, but then his fingers ghosted over the back of her head. “Thanks, Alice. Me too.”    
  
She nodded once, sniffled, and disappeared.    
  
Sam stared for a moment, nonplussed, before looking at Rey.    
  
The kitsune was giving him a look he couldn’t read, but there was something terribly sad within it. Sam wondered what it was about Alice that made everyone want to protect her, even him.    
  
“Go talk to Merlin, Sam. Damn warlock’s gonna burn the shop down with his nerves and I’ll have to listen to Kathy whine until I fix it.” They both ignored the muffin that hit the kitsune in the back of the head.    
  
Sam wandered over to the counter, where Merlin was drying off some ceramic mugs with a rag. He was using so much force that Sam was actually waiting for the mug to crack in his grip.    
  
“Hey... Merlin,” he said. And wow, it was weird addressing a kid you knew was actually a millennia-old magic user most people thought was a legend. And to think Sam had once actually thought he was just a barista.    
  
“Hi, Sam,” Merlin said, not looking at him. “What’s up?”   
  
“Well, I had a question,” Sam said, and Merlin looked up at him distractedly. “Is Arthur  _ King Arthur _ , because he saved my life last night with a move that shouldn’t be possible and you’re  _ Merlin _ , so...” ****  
** **

Merlin fumbled the mug he was cleaned, dropping it to the floor with a crash as he stuttered. “No, no, I’m not—I mean Arthur’s not—I…” He faltered, swallowed a few times, his face deathly pale. “I’m just… a street magician! Right.” He gave Sam a nervous, almost wild look. “I can pull a quarter from behind your ear?” ****  
** **

Sam stares at him for a moment, and it occurred to him that he had learned who Merlin was from Bennie and Morgan, and that Merlin didn’t realize that Sam  _ knew _ . He grimaced. “Sorry… I was…” He licked his lips. “Well, I was here after Morgan remembered. Or, I guess I was  _ why _ she remembered. So I… uh… I  _ know _ .” ****  
** **

Merlin stared at him for a long moment, then dropped his shoulders. “Oh. So they… okay.” He looked disappointed but rallied quickly. “Okay, then!” With a wave of his hand and a flash of golden eyes overlaying blue, the shattered pieces of mug snapped back together and the mug flew into his waiting hands. “So, what we you asking? About Arthur? Yes. But he doesn’t know that and we’re not going to tell him before he remembers on his own, so also  _ no _ .” ****  
** **

Sam was quite for a moment, watching Merlin. If he hadn’t been watching so closely, hadn’t had experience with it, he wouldn’t have noticed the look of utter exhaustion hidden behind that carefree mask. Except Sam did know what it was like to be so tired you lived there in that exhausted state and it hurt to see just how good Merlin was at hiding that fact away. How many people knew that side of him? He didn’t imagine there were many. ****  
** **

He thought about telling Merlin about Arthur asking for a sword, but it occurred to him that Stanford taught Fencing, so maybe Arthur was just accustomed to having something more deadly than a flashlight on hand. Instead, he gave Merlin a reassuring smile. “I won’t say anything. But, to sate my own curiosity, there’s a Gwen and Lance, too?” ****  
** **

Merlin sighed and part of it might even have been in relief. “Yeah. Gwen and Lance are pretty obvious. You’ve met Gavin.” ****  
** **

“Gawain,” Sam murmured, and Merlin smiled.  ****  
** **

“Yeah. You know Morgan and Isabene. I don’t think you’ve met Percy, Leon, or Elliot, yet. You actually just missed Elliot. He and Gwen just left with their parents.”  ****  
** **

“How many of them remember?” Sam asked. He didn’t want to slip up if he went to Morgan for help and said something incriminating in front of someone who shouldn’t know, yet. ****  
** **

“Besides Isabene and myself? Morgan.” ****  
** **

Sam waited. “That’s… that’s it?” ****  
** **

“It could be years, Sam. They might not ever remember. I’ve run into them all before, you know - all of them except Arthur. Sometimes they remembered. Usually, they didn’t.” His smile was sad. “It’d be kinder if Fate didn’t make them remember.”  ****  
** **

Sam studied Merlin for a moment. “What about you?” ****  
** **

“I always remember.” ****  
** **

“No, but… wouldn’t it be kinder to you to have someone else there? To have your friends back?” ****  
** **

“I have Bennie, and this isn’t about me, Sam. It’s about them. It’s about Arthur.” His voice was almost too low for Sam to hear as he murmured, “It was always about Arthur.”  ****  
** **

Sam rather thought it likely that Arthur was here now because it was time for it to be about Merlin. Or at least time for someone to be there for Merlin, if the weary sorrow in his eyes was any indication. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “Arthur ended up catching me breaking into the haunted dormitory last night. He helped me stop the poltergeist. He’s probably the only reason I didn’t start haunting the place myself.” No  _ probably _ about it, really, but they didn’t really need to know how close he had been to being killed.  ****  
** **

“He’s probably even worse off than I am today,” Sam said, trying to ignore the burn of incredibly sore muscles. “He got thrown down a flight of stairs at one point.”  ****  
** **

Merlin’s hands tightened around the mug. “Do you know where he went afterward? He didn’t come home and he’s not answering his phone.” ****  
** **

“I didn’t,” Sam admitted, feeling guilty for not checking in on the man himself and making sure he had made it home okay. He might have been a security guard but that didn’t mean he was equipped for  _ hunts _ . “He told me he had to finish up his rounds, or at least check in, and I was supposed to go back to my apartment right away.”  _ And not break into anymore dormitories for the night.  _ “But I asked Alice if she would look in on him.”  ****  
** **

Merlin’s lips twitched. “You asked  _ Alice _ to check in on Arthur?” ****  
** **

Sam smiled. “Well, she does seem oddly capable of getting into places. I figured she could manage to do it without waking him if he was sleeping.”  ****  
** **

“Could she? Sure. Will she? I guess we’ll see.”  ****  
** **

“Hey, I can be stealthy when I want to. I didn’t wake you this morning, did I, Sam?” ****  
** **

Sam blushed, thinking about walking in front of her in his boxers and not realizing. If he’d not had a roommate, he wouldn’t have even bothered with the boxers. “N-no.”  ****  
** **

“See? Stealth.” She plucked the cup out of Merlin’s hands. “Arthur is at Gavin and Bennie’s place. His phone battery is dead. If you listen to him (and I don’t recommend it), he’s dying, because he’s in so much pain.” She rolled her eyes. “So I’m going to be nice and ask Kathy to make him a muscle relief cream or potion or whatever she has on hand. Probably the entire kitchen, knowing Kathy.” She pointed a finger at Sam. “You’re getting some, too, so don’t go running off anywhere.”  ****  
** **

She didn’t bother stepping around the counter, just climbed over it like a monkey. She poked Merlin in the side with a spoon she pulled from somewhere. “But you should probably definitely go see him, kidnap him, and take him back to your place.” She shuddered. “I think Gavin and Bennie want some alone time. Don’t ask me how I know. Don’t. Ever. Ask.”  ****  
** **

Sam grinned at her as she got to her feet and trotted over to Kathy, who was… talking to one of the coffee machines, apparently. He looked back at Merlin. “Does this happen a lot to you?” ****  
** **

“Friends getting into fights with monsters, disappearing for hours to days, claiming to be dying, possibly dying, and everyone else just sits back drinking coffee because it must be Tuesday?” Sam nodded uncertainly and Merlin sighed. “Must be Tuesday.”  ****  
** **

Sam thought about ten flights of stairs that had somehow become fifty and nodded.  ****  
** **

Yeah. That sounded like a Tuesday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused about who the hell Isabene (Bennie) is, check out TotalNovakTrash's [ Destiny's Beginning. ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10856775/chapters/24109257)
> 
> Also, keep an eye out for an upcoming chapter of TotalNovakTrash's [ All Is Fair In Love and Coffee ](https://archiveofourown.org/series/992226) series that shows this conversation from Merlin's (and more) POV.
> 
> Also, you're getting a double-update today. Keep an eye for the upcoming one-shot in the series.


End file.
